s
instead of strong and robust boys and girls.

Dr. Robert B. Bean of Ann Arbor, in his essay on "The Training of the
Negro" in _Century Magazine_ of October, 1906, said that in the large
cities the Negro is being forced by competition into the most degraded
and least remunerative occupations; that such occupations make them
helpless to combat the blight of squalor and disease which are
inevitable in these cities, and therefore many of them are being
destroyed by them.

Mr. Baker says:

"One of the questions I asked of Negroes whom I met both North and South
was this:

"'What is your chief cause of complaint?'

"In the South the first answer nearly always referred to the Jim Crow
cars or the Jim Crow railroad stations; after that, the complaint was of
political disfranchisement, the difficulty of getting justice in the
courts, the lack of good school facilities, and in some localities, of
the danger of actual physical violence.

"But in the North the first answer invariably referred to working
conditions.

"'The Negro isn't given a fair opportunity to get employment. He is
discriminated against because he is colored.'"

These conditions instead of promoting the social efficiency of the
Negro, tend to degrade and demoralize him. The argument that the
deprivation of the Negro's political and social rights in the South
tends to crush his ambition, warp his aspirations and distort his
judgment, is unsound, because his self-reliance, ambition and
independence in the South can be traced partly to this very deprivation.
By it he has been forced to establish his own schools, his own churches,
educate his own children and train his own ministers. All of these make
for self-reliance and independence and are therefore conducive to his
social efficiency.

CHAPTER 18.

SCHOOL PROBLEMS OF A TUSKEGEE GRADUATE.

"Two distinct problems face the Tuskegee graduate who goes forth as a
leader of his people: the problem of extending education to the masses
of our people and the problem of so adjusting the people to their actual
conditions that the two races will be able to live and work together in
harmony and helpfulness.

It may as well be admitted at the outset that the public schools in the
rural districts of the lower South are not working toward this end. The
condition of the public schools for our people in the Black Belt section
of this state is disheartening. As unreasonable as it may seem, it is a
fact tha